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Sharon Calls Urgent Security Cabinet Meeting to Discuss Bombing Attack
Israel's inner security cabinet completed its urgent meeting Saturday morning and discussed a possible response to the Tel Aviv suicide bombing that left 18 dead and more than 100 injured overnight.
The inner security cabinet consists of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer.
Following the meeting in the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, Sharon is holding the full security cabinet meeting to continue discussing the matter, Israeli radio reported.
The full security cabinet consists of 13 members, including the prime minister.
The radio quoted government sources as saying that the attack signalled the end of the unilateral ceasefire declared by Sharon 10 days ago, and that the prime minister would likely postpone a planned trip to Europe, due to begin on Monday.
Dozens of people took to the streets opposite to the Defense Ministry on Saturday to protest Sharon's cease-fire policy. They called upon Sharon to harshly respond to the attack.
Hours after the attack, Ra'anan Gissin, a senior spokesman for Sharon, refused to comment on whether Sharon would end his policy of relative restraint. "When the blood boils and the heart is torn, we have to be measured in order to achieve our goal of security," he said.
"For the first time in eight months of the intifada, the world can see, once and for all, who is really searching for peace in the Middle East and who is trying to use violence to achieve what they did not manage to get around the negotiating table," he added.
In the wake of the bombing, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) tightened its closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and security officials called on all Palestinian workers inside Israel, whether holding work permit or not, to immediately return to their homes in the territories.
"This is one of the worst terror attacks we have known. Israel is doing everything possible to end the violence. (Palestinian leader) Yasser Arafat is trying to plunge the region into chaos," Ben Eliezer's office said in a statement Saturday.
Talking at the scene of the attack, Public Security Minister Uzi Landau said that Israel had still not used "all the means at its disposal, but we have to understand who our enemy is -- an enemy void of mercy or any moral barriers."
Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh Saturday termed the bombing as a "strategic attack, in a place where there are children, teenagers. Nothing can be worse than this. We will have to change the rules of the game."
For the Palestinian part, Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala) told Al-Jazeera television on Saturday that the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) condemned all attacks on civilians, whether they be Israelis or Palestinians.
He added that a retaliatory strike by Israel was likely, and possibly even an effort to topple the PNA.
He also insisted that there "be no way to put an end to this cycle of violence as long as the Israeli government is not responding to the international community's call or invitation to put an end to the aggression it is practicing against the Palestinian people."
Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a spokesman for Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, said that "This kind of operation is the right of the Palestinian people to terrorize the enemies."
Close to midnight Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv's beach front, killing 17 Israelis aged between 17 to 19. This was the deadliest suicide attack against Israel since 1997.
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